fic: Fine Damn Year (Texas Rangers gen: CJ Wilson, Cliff Lee) PG
title: Fine Damn Year
rating: PG
word count: 918
team/players: Rangers: CJ Wilson, Cliff Lee
warnings: Second-person POV.
notes: Have you listened to this guy talk? His stream of consciousness must be really fucking wordy is all I'm saying. Written for bats_and_balls round one, guitargirl39's prompt: "Ever since you hung up on me, I'm hung up on you" (Fountains of Wayne, "Hung Up on You"). Totally gen.
summary: You can't decide if this moment would be better or worse if it were happening in San Francisco instead of here.
The clubhouse is oddly quiet. There are a good fifty people around, and nobody's saying much of anything except maybe the reporters, and even their voices are hushed like somebody died. You imagine you can hear the hollering and splashing from the visitor's clubhouse, from the tunnel, and maybe you can. If your locker were closer to the door, you could probably still hear the modest celebration still going on out on the field.
You can't decide if this moment would be better or worse if it were happening in San Francisco instead of here. Losing on your home field, not just losing a game but losing the whole fucking World Series-it's not a fun feeling. It almost makes you wish you had Jesus to turn to, like Hamilton, or a bottle, like Young, or a sweet little family, like Kinsler. You just have cars and moral principles and the maximum number of facebook fans.
Your cars are pretty fucking awesome, though, so at least there's that.
Rich Harden texts you to complain about the "frankly ridiculous" amount of money he just lost to Zito in a bet between, like, cast-offs who have been disappointments in wildly different ways. You type back, "that's what you get for betting with barry zito," but you don't send it. Anybody who bets with a guy who makes about fifteen times as much as him deserves to lose. Besides, your team just lost the World Series through absolutely no fault of yours, and you're allowed to be a little petty. Especially since he always beats you at Words With Friends, which you resent on the grounds of your sneaking suspicion that he isn't even literate.
(You send it later, though, sometime overnight. You hope it wakes him up.)
You turn your Blackberry off.
Everyone sticks around after they kick the reporters out, because this team is a family in even more senses than the hokey all-for-one soundbite the media's been gaga for since the West was won. You hug Nelson Cruz so hard something pops and both of you laugh. He thumps you on the back. Kinsler runs around like someone let him have meth, knocking into you from behind at one point and then actually lifting you off the ground when he recovers and hugs you. You pull his hair and pretend to be very offended, but can't resist laughing when Andrus catches your eye and mouths 'loco.'
You love all of them so much in that moment you think you might blow up.
Cliff Lee is sitting quietly in his locker, pulling from a flask tucked between his thighs every so often. He doesn't seem to be doing anything, just staring listlessly into the space between him and the uniform shirts dangling there. He looks tired and annoyed but not upset. You aren't sure the man gets upset.
You pull up a chair next to him, press your palms together between your knees. He takes a drink, savors it, then glances at you.
"Getting pretty well acquainted with getting so close and losing," Cliff Lee says. "Gotta make sure it don't happen again," he says to you, patting your shoulder in that I-wish-you-were-into-the-senseless-murder-of-woodland-creatures-for-sport-so-we-could-really-bond way he has. Merely being left-handed isn't enough for a guy like Cliff Lee. He's Cliff Lee and who are you, again?
"You gonna stick around?" you ask, like he hasn't been asked that very question, like, nineteen hundred times tonight. You didn't mean to, but once it's out, you roll with it.
He shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. Kristen'll pick it as much as me, so we'll see. She likes it here. Close to home."
"And if the pinstripes roll out a yellow brick road for you?" you ask, keeping your eyes on the number on the back of the first jersey in the locker.
"Then I'll follow that motherfucker to the bank," he says, unconcerned. "But that ain't what I'm talking about." He picks up a ball from the shelf at the top of his locker and holds it up so you can see it. It's scuffed all to hell, a minor league BP ball if you've ever seen one. "I'm good enough to get a team there, but I don't win the trophies by myself, you know?"
You blink and your whole body jerks, every part of you feeling betrayed. Before, it was just your heart, broken by baseball and the vagaries of fate or whatever, and you have to catch your breath. Not Cliff Lee, too, you think.
"You feel like that, you can go and we'll be glad," you say sourly.
"See, now. There's some anger." He grins. His smiles rarely reach his eyes, but this one does. You wonder at that. "Coulda used some anger this series. Happy team unity shit is good, makes a pleasant work environment and good quotes for the papers, but don't win championships. Pitching gets you in, anger gets you rings. Gotta be angry."
"I try not to be angry all the time," you say.
He holds the scuffed ball out to you. "Had this since Buffalo," he says.
You take the ball and look at it. "So it's old."
"Nah, since I got sent down in '07 for being shitty." He smiles with teeth. You roll the ball between your palms, lay your fingers down along the seams like you're searching for pitches. Your whole left hand throbs, though, and you hand the ball back to him.
"So this is, like, an anger trophy?" you ask.
"It's a reminder that I'm not that awesome," he says. He tosses the ball up and catches it so tightly his tendons pop out white against his skin. "Plus, I stole it from the Indians."
You nod, feeling like this whole thing is going over your head. He tosses the ball back into the locker. It hits the back wall with a thud, then lands in the pile of discarded clothing at the bottom. You wonder if his Cy Young plaque isn't maybe in his garage, in a box with some of his kids' old toys.
"Might be Nolan Ryan that rolls out the carpet for you," you say, standing up and brushing off your pants.
He nods and takes another pull from his flask. "Then hey, we'll see," he says, raising it to you.
You smile and walk away.
You're one of the first to leave. Mike Maddux catches you near by door and pulls you over to a cluster of coaches and Front Office folks. Wash hugs you and says, "Fine damn year, son," which just about makes you cry but Nolan Ryan's standing next to him and you're pretty sure you'd find yourself traded to Baltimore if he saw tears.
Ryan shakes your hand and nods approvingly, and it turns out his eyes are looking pretty misty. "Next year," he says. "Don't get hung up on it. S'always next year."
rating: PG
word count: 918
team/players: Rangers: CJ Wilson, Cliff Lee
warnings: Second-person POV.
notes: Have you listened to this guy talk? His stream of consciousness must be really fucking wordy is all I'm saying. Written for bats_and_balls round one, guitargirl39's prompt: "Ever since you hung up on me, I'm hung up on you" (Fountains of Wayne, "Hung Up on You"). Totally gen.
summary: You can't decide if this moment would be better or worse if it were happening in San Francisco instead of here.
The clubhouse is oddly quiet. There are a good fifty people around, and nobody's saying much of anything except maybe the reporters, and even their voices are hushed like somebody died. You imagine you can hear the hollering and splashing from the visitor's clubhouse, from the tunnel, and maybe you can. If your locker were closer to the door, you could probably still hear the modest celebration still going on out on the field.
You can't decide if this moment would be better or worse if it were happening in San Francisco instead of here. Losing on your home field, not just losing a game but losing the whole fucking World Series-it's not a fun feeling. It almost makes you wish you had Jesus to turn to, like Hamilton, or a bottle, like Young, or a sweet little family, like Kinsler. You just have cars and moral principles and the maximum number of facebook fans.
Your cars are pretty fucking awesome, though, so at least there's that.
Rich Harden texts you to complain about the "frankly ridiculous" amount of money he just lost to Zito in a bet between, like, cast-offs who have been disappointments in wildly different ways. You type back, "that's what you get for betting with barry zito," but you don't send it. Anybody who bets with a guy who makes about fifteen times as much as him deserves to lose. Besides, your team just lost the World Series through absolutely no fault of yours, and you're allowed to be a little petty. Especially since he always beats you at Words With Friends, which you resent on the grounds of your sneaking suspicion that he isn't even literate.
(You send it later, though, sometime overnight. You hope it wakes him up.)
You turn your Blackberry off.
Everyone sticks around after they kick the reporters out, because this team is a family in even more senses than the hokey all-for-one soundbite the media's been gaga for since the West was won. You hug Nelson Cruz so hard something pops and both of you laugh. He thumps you on the back. Kinsler runs around like someone let him have meth, knocking into you from behind at one point and then actually lifting you off the ground when he recovers and hugs you. You pull his hair and pretend to be very offended, but can't resist laughing when Andrus catches your eye and mouths 'loco.'
You love all of them so much in that moment you think you might blow up.
Cliff Lee is sitting quietly in his locker, pulling from a flask tucked between his thighs every so often. He doesn't seem to be doing anything, just staring listlessly into the space between him and the uniform shirts dangling there. He looks tired and annoyed but not upset. You aren't sure the man gets upset.
You pull up a chair next to him, press your palms together between your knees. He takes a drink, savors it, then glances at you.
"Getting pretty well acquainted with getting so close and losing," Cliff Lee says. "Gotta make sure it don't happen again," he says to you, patting your shoulder in that I-wish-you-were-into-the-senseless-murder-of-woodland-creatures-for-sport-so-we-could-really-bond way he has. Merely being left-handed isn't enough for a guy like Cliff Lee. He's Cliff Lee and who are you, again?
"You gonna stick around?" you ask, like he hasn't been asked that very question, like, nineteen hundred times tonight. You didn't mean to, but once it's out, you roll with it.
He shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not. Kristen'll pick it as much as me, so we'll see. She likes it here. Close to home."
"And if the pinstripes roll out a yellow brick road for you?" you ask, keeping your eyes on the number on the back of the first jersey in the locker.
"Then I'll follow that motherfucker to the bank," he says, unconcerned. "But that ain't what I'm talking about." He picks up a ball from the shelf at the top of his locker and holds it up so you can see it. It's scuffed all to hell, a minor league BP ball if you've ever seen one. "I'm good enough to get a team there, but I don't win the trophies by myself, you know?"
You blink and your whole body jerks, every part of you feeling betrayed. Before, it was just your heart, broken by baseball and the vagaries of fate or whatever, and you have to catch your breath. Not Cliff Lee, too, you think.
"You feel like that, you can go and we'll be glad," you say sourly.
"See, now. There's some anger." He grins. His smiles rarely reach his eyes, but this one does. You wonder at that. "Coulda used some anger this series. Happy team unity shit is good, makes a pleasant work environment and good quotes for the papers, but don't win championships. Pitching gets you in, anger gets you rings. Gotta be angry."
"I try not to be angry all the time," you say.
He holds the scuffed ball out to you. "Had this since Buffalo," he says.
You take the ball and look at it. "So it's old."
"Nah, since I got sent down in '07 for being shitty." He smiles with teeth. You roll the ball between your palms, lay your fingers down along the seams like you're searching for pitches. Your whole left hand throbs, though, and you hand the ball back to him.
"So this is, like, an anger trophy?" you ask.
"It's a reminder that I'm not that awesome," he says. He tosses the ball up and catches it so tightly his tendons pop out white against his skin. "Plus, I stole it from the Indians."
You nod, feeling like this whole thing is going over your head. He tosses the ball back into the locker. It hits the back wall with a thud, then lands in the pile of discarded clothing at the bottom. You wonder if his Cy Young plaque isn't maybe in his garage, in a box with some of his kids' old toys.
"Might be Nolan Ryan that rolls out the carpet for you," you say, standing up and brushing off your pants.
He nods and takes another pull from his flask. "Then hey, we'll see," he says, raising it to you.
You smile and walk away.
You're one of the first to leave. Mike Maddux catches you near by door and pulls you over to a cluster of coaches and Front Office folks. Wash hugs you and says, "Fine damn year, son," which just about makes you cry but Nolan Ryan's standing next to him and you're pretty sure you'd find yourself traded to Baltimore if he saw tears.
Ryan shakes your hand and nods approvingly, and it turns out his eyes are looking pretty misty. "Next year," he says. "Don't get hung up on it. S'always next year."